It also comes barely a week after the bank was revealed to be preparing to take an axe to its investment bank and sack thousands of staff.

The radical overhaul comes as it tries to appease furious investors over its decision to hand a 13 per cent pay rise to staff at the investment bank last year, despite the slump in profits.

Staff received an average bonus of £61,000, angering campaigners and politicians.Some shareholders have run out of patience with the poor performance of the investment bank, coupled with rising costs.

Barclays has set a target of slashing costs across the group by £1.7billion next year.

It has been mulling plans to restructure the investment bank since the departure of it’s controversial former boss Rich Ricci last April.

The total bonus pot figure, which emerged in a disclosure to the London Stock Exchange, is down on the £40million shared by nine executives last year, which included £18million awarded to Mr Ricci.

Barclays will at least have managed to avoid criticism for trying to bury the news of its bonus payments this year.

Last year, Barclays released the details of the bonus awards to the London Stock Exchange at 3pm on the afternoon of the Chancellor’s Budget statement in what many viewed as an attempt to hide the details under the cover of one of the busiest days of the year for financial journalists and UK markets alike.

The tactic drew immediate criticism from John Hunter, a policy member of the UK shareholder association, which aims to protect the rights of private shareholders, who called Barclay's decision to release the bonus figures after the Chancellor’s Budget statement ‘sneaky’.

Bumper payout: Rich Ricci was awarded £18m in bonus last year before retiring from Barclays. Last year details of the bonus payments were released on the same day as the Chancellor's Budget statement.

He said: ‘They are trying to bury bad news. It is a standard PR tactic. It is an attempt to get a story about their massive bonuses off the front pages

‘Society's first reaction is that bankers are a bunch of sleazeballs, and this makes them look even sleazier.’

At the time of its results, Mr Jenkins defended the increase in staff incentives, saying the group believes in ‘paying for performance and paying competitively’.

He also insisted the bank is ‘in a better position than we have been for many years’.

The chief executive, who was paid £1.6million in 2013 after waiving an annual bonus and receiving no long-term incentive shares, received 1.6million shares from earlier years today, before nearly half were sold for tax purposes.

Other awards include shares worth nearly £9million for Skip McGee, who is chief executive for Barclays in the Americas, and £8.6million for the joint head of corporate and investment banking, Eric Bommensath.

Unlike the other executives, Mr Jenkins and finance director Tushar Morzaria are not yet entitled to receive role-based shares allowances, which have been introduced to allow banks to get around a new EU bonus cap.

Mr Jenkins is due to be paid £950,000 over 2014 in quarterly instalments but this still requires the approval of shareholders at the company's annual general meeting.

The new EU rules came into force on January 1, limiting annual payouts for 2014 onwards to 100 per cent of annual salary, or a maximum of 200 per cent with shareholder approval.

Barclays will ask shareholders to back payments up to 200 per cent of salary, while its new role-based pay awards mean staff can still pick up bumper handouts.